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Thursday, May 1, 2008

Blessing Of The Fleet

Today was the 51st annual Blessing of the Fleet. This is a really cool event where all of the charter boats in the fishing fleet are blessed. The blessings are done by a group of local pastors. One by one the boats pull up in front of the dock and a pastor says the name of the boat and the name of the captain and then a short prayer over each boat, praying for safe passage out and home again and for a bountiful catch. Each boat is blessed and then moves on as the next boat pulls up. They have loud speakers set up all along the docks so everyone can hear and then when all of the boats have been blessed there is a fish fry for everyone. We walked out to the end of the dock right across from where the pastors were and we were standing there taking pictures. There was a big charter boat parked at the end of the dock and the captain's wife started asking questions about our camera. The next thing we knew she'd invited us aboard and we were sitting up on the bow with a front row view LOL The Youngest Island Boy made himself right at home with the captain and some new friends. There are over 100 boats in the fleet and a lot of pleasure boats came out as well so it was an almost 2 hour long parade of boats. After all of the boats were blessed we ate some fish and wandered the docks for a while. This is really a fun event and today was a beautiful day for it. I took so many pictures that I decided to make a slide show instead of trying to get them all into this post. Take a look - this is one of the things that I love most about living here!